Sometimes I find notes from myself when I'm not looking for them. I assume that at the time of writing I usually intended them to make more sense.
The latest offering from the Ghost of Insomnius Past goes something like this:
Fleet Foxes
Yeasayer
Low
- moving + stopping
- !irony
- e-fame >:( [the little frowny face is actually the right way up instead of sideways, though]
HYPE
- memes
- don't read the comments
Perhaps I had travelled back in time to warn myself about the internet? Mentioning some bands that present-day me likes might have been a desperate bid to give the prophecy some credibility.
Alas, it arrived too late.
This just in: it's much easier to write about things that are silly than it is to write about things that are awesome.
So, yesterday I spontaneously decided to go and see Iron Man. I'm quite fond of comic-book-adaptation movies; the mediocre ones are entertaining enough and have enough Great Big Effects to justify spending money to watch them, and the good ones ... well, the good ones are better than the mediocre ones. They never make my favourites list, but they're pretty good.
Iron Man falls squarely in the Mediocre But Fun category. In the proud tradition started (for me) by Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and proudly carried on by (for instance) that Narnia movie, Iron Man was fun to watch for the spectacle and the joy of laughing at things the rest of the audience isn't laughing at. Most of its value lies in ridiculousness which can be mocked later; this is particularly true if you have seen it with someone who thought it was "awesome sauce".
The Good:
- Robert Downey Jr, playing the character that Robert Downey Jr plays so well.
- Awesome suiting-up sequences.
- Gwyneth Paltrow (surprisingly, for me).
- J.A.R.V.I.S - mm, sarcastic AI with a British accent.
The Bad:
- Strange pacing, a overly long prologue and a bizarre lack of any feeling that anything is really at stake. In a way, nothing really seems to happen.
- America Good. Weapons And Guns And Stuff That Goes Bam Good (Unless Brown People Have Them).
- Highly educated, politically aware women will turn into undiscriminating nymphomaniacs the moment they are patronised by the right sexist jerk.
- Gags that seem quite funny at first turn out to be the setup for the same gag, which will show up three or four more times.
- Completely unconvincing I-will-become-a-hero epiphany and accompanying speech.
The So Bad It's Good:
- Ham-handed foreshadowing all over the place. Gosh, do you think that might turn out to be the Big Bad Guy? Do you think that maybe he might turn out to need that [significant item] at a crucial moment in the future?
- Bad guys who lose because they are just not very good, rather than being defeated because the good guys are awesome.
- Power armour that protects the wearer from sustained gunfire, tanks, etc, despite having bullet holes in it afterwards.
- Robert Downey Jr's facial hair.
- "Special" laws of physics etc. for this comic-book-movie world, which are then violated by the comic-book-movie itself.
- Hey, isn't that a gizmo from Men In Black?
I don't begrudge the money I paid to see Iron Man - half the fun is seeing it on the big screen, and the other half is seeing it with a bunch of other people (many of whom react with surprise to the blindingly obvious, thus providing yet more snarky fun for yours truly). On the other hand, I wouldn't pay full price to see it and I don't think I'd even sacrifice two hours to see it again for free.
Can The Dark Knight come out now, please?
I have been reading things! Strange but true.
The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
The second book in Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, and more enjoyable for me than the first (which wasn't too bad itself). Will was a better protagonist than Lyra, there were no talking bears, and the subplot with *spoiler redacted* had me turning pages as eagerly as anything I've read recently. I think if I had read these books ten years ago I would have thought them the greatest thing ever in the world; as it is, I quite like the way interesting ideas (like the intersection of physics and theology) are explored without any need for the kind of in-depth justifications that readers of "adult" speculative fiction would probably demand.
I feel fortunate not to have a chip on my shoulder about religion, as many of the reactions to Pullman's series seem to centre on outrage of some kind. I just enjoy reading the books for some not-too-fluffy light entertainment.
Oh, and there were Dementors. That was pretty weird.
Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
A long time ago I read an excerpt from one of the books in the Gormenghast trilogy, and now I've finally read the first book itself. It's grotesque in the true sense of the word, and although the style is a bit dated it actually works perfectly in the context of the story. I loved the names of the characters - Prunesquallor the doctor, Swelter the obese, evil head chef, the gloomy earl Sepulchrave - and although almost all of them were completely unlikeable I still wanted to read about their bizarre, dysfunctional adventures. For once I didn't even have to skip through the big slabs of text where the author decides to describe the landscape, because even those sections were interesting to read. Nom nom nom.
Moscow Stations by Venedikt Yerofeev
I read this book by accident, because my sister had borrowed it from a fancy archival library and it was short enough to read in a couple of hours. It's apparently both autobiographical and fantastic; I'm sure I would have gotten more out of it had I a better grounding in Russian literature and Soviet history, because every second paragraph felt like an allusion to something I didn't understand. Still a good read, if by "read" you mean "experience of words gathering momentum and vast quantities of alcohol and hurtling into a surreal nightmare and then stopping".
Preacher: Ancient History by Garth Ennis
I really enjoyed the previous three volumes of collected Preacher comics, but Ancient History was ... quite bad. As a collection of backstories it didn't have anything to make up for the absence of the main narrative (which stays on the right side of ludicrous), and other than the Saint of Killers (who comes first in this volume) the characters whose histories were explored just weren't interesting. The writing in the last section seemed particularly terrible; Preacher always has a very pulp-fiction feel to it, but the retelling of the Good Old Boys' past is tedious and clunky rather than an entertaining pastiche.
I'm trying not to let Ancient History put me off reading any more Preacher, but it's difficult.
Next on my to-read list: Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb. Hooray for fantasy that doesn't suck! (I hope!) And then I will have no backlog at all, and need to find something new to read.
